The Retreat From Burma (February 1971 | Volume: 22, Issue: 2)

The Retreat From Burma

AH article image

Authors: Barbara W. Tuchman

Historic Era:

Historic Theme:

Subject:

February 1971 | Volume 22, Issue 2

 
“I claim we got a hall of a beating”

The almost antique heroism and perseverance that Joseph W. Stilwell was to display in the grim, losing battle for Burma m 1942 is the subject of this, the last of a three-part series by Barbara W. Tuchman from her forthcoming book, now entitled Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45 . During 1940-41, the years of America’s dying neutrality and frantic (when it was not lethargic)preparation, Stilwell’s training of the Jth Division and his use of blitzkrieg methods m maneuvers had earned him both a reputation as an outstanding tactician and a second star within a year of his first. At the time of Pearl Harbor he was rated Number One of the nine corps commanders in the U.S. Army. Summoned to Washington on December 22, he learned he had been chosen to command the first American offensive of the war, a landing in North Africa, code-named GYMNAST . It is at this point that we pick up Mrs. Tuchman’s story.

While Stilwell was wrestling with the plans for GYMNAST, the Japanese were crashing through in one astounding victory after another. Guam and Wake fell on December 23. On Christmas day, after a hundred years as a British stronghold, Hongkong surrendered. In the Philippines, belying first reports, the Japanese had made good their landing and, with 200,000 troops ashore, were driving the American-Filipino force into the bottleneck of the Bataan Peninsula. On January 2 they captured Manila. Parachute troops had invaded the Netherlands Indies, Thailand was occupied, and Indochina was opened up by the acquiescent Vichy regime, bringing the Japanese forward to the eastern frontier of Burma. They had also landed on the Malay Peninsula at its waist, seized the British airfield there, and were advancing southward toward Singapore through the jungle. On land and sea their dive bombers and torpedo planes had air superiority. Under the “hideous efficiency” of the Japanese war machine, as Churchill called it, white prestige in Asia was crumbling in ruins.

For China the long-awaited advent of Western allies brought debacle instead of assistance. The Europe-first strategy on which the British and Americans had agreed added to her bitterness and isolation, giving rise to mutterings about a separate peace. Roosevelt was beset by the fear, if China should give up resistance, of all Asia’s gravitating to Japan; the Joint Chiefs feared the Japanese divisions that would be released if China capitulated. They were as persuaded as the President of the need to keep China in the war and for that reason of the vital importance of holding Burma, China’s supply line. Although Burma was British territory, its chief importance to the British was as a buffer to protect India. Lying between India and China, Burma was seen strategically by the Allies from two different angles of view, and the split focus was never to be resolved.

 

To conserve